Sat. June 9, 2012 “Fixing the house”

I feel completely useless while my cousin, Duy Nguyen, had been busy fixing up the house since yesterday. He changed all the light bulbs and did all the electrical wirings while I tried to help him as much as I could but the weather here in Vietnam has been pretty brutal. It’s not hot as it is in India, but the humidity is pretty bad. So I feel a little lethargic even though I am not doing any physical labor. This time of year is supposed to be the best time, the monsoon is supposed to cool things down and I bet it does but it’s just not cool enough for me who is so spoiled by San Francisco’s weather. So I have confined myself in front my computer, either studying Sanskrit or blogging.

Mom, however, is a little too overprotective of me. She thinks that I’m taking too many showers and that I might catch a cold and I have to really dry myself well and not keep the fan blowing so high. But I have to reassure her many times that I am not used to this hot and humid climate and that the best way for me to take care of myself is to keep myself nice and cool. Otherwise there’s a risk of me getting heat exhaustion. Right now I feel somewhat exhausted even though I haven’t done anything other than studying or blogging. So while I’m blogging, I feel like I can’t even think straight.

Probably once my cousin and a few other helpers have fixed up this house, we will be going to the South China Sea since the town is very close to the coast (thanks to google map otherwise I think I would have a lot of problem identifying a lot of the geography).

This afternoon there’s been a bit of a respite in the rain and my cousin hired a few guys to help us fix the crack on the roof that causes numerous headaches for my mom when it rains because this house leaks in ten different places but the crack on the roof is the worse. Not sure how much it’s going to costs us but I think I can cover it.

we had to take a ferry across a pretty shallow inlet to get to a place where i could cash my traveler's cheques.

breakfast for saturday...wish the portions were a little bigger.

I didn't know that Vietnamese people worship their ancestors...my mother thinks that it brings good karma for me if she serves her mother until the end of her life. This was for my grandfather.

lunch on Saturday. 

this crack and the one on the roof have been a constant headache. I was afraid that this part of the building my collapse..but mom reassured me that the frame is very strong...not going to happen.

 just hoping that it will not leak anymore.